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In Goa, volunteers create web portal to help daily wagers find work during lockdown
The database of Goa Covid Outreach group was circulated amid the community and now hosts a pool of more than 1,500 people willing to do odd jobs that include painting, masonry, housekeeping, plumbing, carpentry, appliance repairs and as car mechanics.
A network of volunteers in Goa that was formed to provide food to the needy in the early days of lockdown has now gone a step further and helping them – mostly daily wage labourers – find work.
The Goa Covid Outreach, which began as a relief service during the lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19, also provides documentation services.
“We started by doing delivery of rations for around 200 migrant labourers who were building the new high court complex opposite the secretariat and had been abandoned by the contractor. It began with the idea that we do some relief work and then let the government to take over,” said Miriam Koshy, an artist and former business student who is associated with the organisation.
However, as the network and scale of the operation grew, the volunteers began to help document stranded migrants to hand over to the Goa government which had by then begun providing cooked food to stranded labourers in its relief efforts.
Soon enough, the volunteers realised that they could put all the data they had gathered to good use.
“We were anyway collecting data to give to the government, then we realised that to take what we are doing to a logical conclusion, we could help these labourers find work,” she said.
“Now that the lockdown is partially lifted and the monsoon is approaching, many people are looking to repair the roofs of their houses or are looking to grow their own food or even doing rainwater harvesting. So our idea was to provide these available labourers to the community,” Koshy explained.
The database set up on the website goacovidoutreach.in was quickly circulated amid the community and now hosts a pool of more than 1,500 people willing to do odd jobs that include painting, masonry, housekeeping, plumbing, carpentry, appliance repairs, car mechanics, etc. All these people were left without any work during the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the government started taking over the primary relief operations, we thought that the best way to help them was to help them get on their own feet so that everybody’s needs can be met. That’s how the portal was born,” Koshy explained.
The network is now also helping educate the labourers on the kind of central government and state government schemes they can avail of to help them during the lockdown.
“There are literally hundreds of stories of agony from the migrants which we heard since we were engaging with them every day and we could see their anguish. But help has also come from all sides and we involved everyone at every level,” Koshy said.
